Language

What to call Americans

Yankees, gringos and USAnians

ENGLISH needs a proper adjective to cover the United States of America and its citizens. “American” is formally ambiguous, even if the context generally makes it clear. It is already awkward when you want to talk about the American representative at the Organisation of American States, but if, say, Unasur, the Latin American block, ever gets itself in gear, the phrase “the American response to the crisis” might get more problematic.

Using "United States" as an adjective, or even US (banned at The Economist, lest too many capital letters "spatter the paper"), brings its own problems: is the apostrophe needed in “the United States' ambassador”? There's none in the formal name of the United States Mint, for example. The “Yankee ambassador” would side-step the problem neatly, but—leaving aside the fact that only outside America does "Yankee" mean all Americans—does the world's most powerful country really want its representative to be a Connecticut Yankee (or any other kind) at Queen Elizabeth's court?

Other languages have the same problem, and their responses differ. Spanish uses americano for all inhabitants of the Americas, though in practice, so little unites them that there is hardly ever cause to use the word. It also has in its armoury norteamericano, which commonly refers to citizens of the United States even though it technically means Mexicans and Canadians too; estadounidense, a latinate adjective from Estados Unidos, which is at least precise, but is rarely heard outside formal speech (well, try saying it); and of course yanqui and gringo, terms not conducive to good diplomacy.Portuguese, too, has estadunidense.

One might posit that only because these languages are spoken in Latin America do they have the need to differentiate one type of American from another. Yet the French language's links to the Americas, in the form of Quebec, don't seem to have had the same effect. Etatsunien or états-unien does not even show up in the dictionary of the Académie Française, while Wikipedia in French acknowledges the word's existence but says it would be like using "Usonian" or "United-Statesian" in English; the French style is to say américain. The Germans don't mess around and will call you US-amerikanisch (so good they named it twice) if they need to be clear—though they spoil this by being just as likely as everyone else to overlook the Mexicans when they say nordamerikanisch. Chinese, on the other hand, can address the problem head-on by appending the specific ideograms for country or continent to the same phonetic root (美国 meiguo, for the country, 美洲 meizhou for the continents).

In despair one might turn to poetry. But even here no help is to be found: Columbia as a personification of the United States is just too like Colombia. All that effort to end up with “the Columbians beat the Colombians 2-0”? No.

If you accept that the need to differentiate is growing as new world powers emerge, you accept that sooner or later our fecund language will see something coined or an old favourite leap to the fore. In fact, according to the Urban Dictionary, it has already happened:

Similar to United Statians, USAnian is a term used mostly by expats to denote North Amerians [sic] who are not Canadians.

Americans. Every country I know of derives its demonym from the specific place-name in its formal name. Denizens of the Russian Federation are called Russians, while those from the United States of Mexico are called Mexicans, rather than "estadosunidosdemexicoense. No other nation, to the best of my knowledge, includes the word "America" in its formal name, so we get to keep it. Simple as that. You've got to work pretty hard to come up with an example in which the meaning isn't clear from context. Indeed, except to refer to the United States, the only instance in which I can imagine anyone having to refer to "American" anything would be in the context of the European exploitation of the Americas, and as this was before a United States, I don't think it likely that there will ever be a conflict.

As to your example, if Unasur gets its act together, there will be a "South American" response, as Unasur would still not speak for Central or North America. Should Unasur manage to get Central America and Mexico on its side, a "Latin American" response still does just fine.

Unless people actually start talking about the Organization of American States (and why in the world would they?) "American" nearly always unambiguously refers to the United States.

I find it easier to call myself Californian while abroad. Not only does everyone understand specifically where I am from, but it also implicitly disregards that whole mess bewteen California and New York.

North America ends in Panama, geographically. There are a lot of countries in North America.
There is one solid solution: the citizens of U.S.A. hold a referendum, & change their name.
With initials like D.C.W.(is your surname Washington?) You are the ideal proponent.

what hubris? i'm just explaining facts. in America, we refer to ourselves as Americans. its a real shame if that pisses people off but it's not going to change. does any other country refer to themselves as America or Americans? Nope, so whats the point of debating it? i guess just to needle the US and portray them as arrogant dicks. well, mission accomplished, pat yourself on the back. now lets move on to a new topic.

I've only ever heard Latin Americans complain about Americans using "American" to refer to people of the USA. I really don't care if they think US and UK English usage of American should be identical to Spanish usage of americano to mean anyone from any part of the Americas.

the debate is moot since americans aren't ever going to stop calling and considering themselves americans. so the rest of the world can go write as many blog posts and articles and comments whining about, its pretty much just tough shit. deal with it. sorry.

Go all states rights and demand we be addressed by the state of our birth. When referring to United States policy as a whole, make it explicit that the government itself has no will of its own and demand that the branch of government involved be addressed directly. This makes it explicit that we the people may change our minds next election.

I vote for USAmericans. Everyone knows what it means, it doesn't sound like an insult, it's easy to type and pronounce, and it includes the good old USA. And it doesn't assume that everyone living on this continent lives in the USA.

In the South, a Yankee is someone who is from above the Mason-Dixon line. Above the Mason-Dixon, a Yankee is someone who is from New England. In New England, a Yankee is a member of the baseball team from New York. Unless you are on the Yankees' baseball team, no one calls themselves a Yankee, or wants to be called one.

To say it another way: There is only one country in the world with the word "America" in its official name. Why not acknowledge that and just deal with it? Too simple, I guess. Here in Argentina the "nicest" word seems to be "Norteamericano," but it begs the issue.